Reap, Wind of Death
by Raven-DarkBlue
Summary: Hisagi Shuuhei grew up eating flowers. He ingested them into his wilted body until he grew tall and lean and fair.


Title: **刈れ****, ****風死****(Kare, Kazeshini.) Reap, Wind of Death.**  
Rating: G  
Pairings/Characters: **Hisagi Shuuhei / Kazeshini, references to Muguruma Kensei** (not-Gin, not-Kira, not anyone from the Third Division whose division insignia is the marigold, the symbol of despair...)  
Warnings: AU and just plain weird; OOC-Shuuhei; half-baked understanding of _burakumin_ and _butoh_  
Word Count: 575  
Disclaimer: Bleach is most certainly not mine

~~~~~~~ 

Once, there was a place where the earth was soaked with blood and tears, and that is where the brightest flowers grow.

Out of that soil (the moisture-laden wetlands, nourished by suffering and sadness and pain) a boy emerges. He is thin and pale, almost hollowed in the cheeks, gaunt. You can see his bones through his pallid skin and he walks with an awkward gait, as though he is pressed down by an invisible weight and held back by something tied around his feet. His long hair streams down his back, they curl around his neck and arms like vines but black as death. The wind whips his naked torso in stinging lashes. Buffeted by the howling wind the boy inches forward. As he moves there sounds the rattling of chains; hanging by his sides are _kusarigama_; the scythe blades gleam and shriek in the sun.

The boy's face is scarred. There is no mark for _burakumin_. Nothing to distinguish between men and those who lived like dogs. The blue stripe on the boy's face is colour he forced under his skin, river that is hemmed in by land, sea that is eaten up by shore. The three lines that fall like blinds down his eye are claw marks left by a demon. It is the darkness inside him tearing him to pieces, whispering betrayal, impaling trust on a stake, inciting fear, hysteria and rage. The boy treads a thin line of madness, the numbers on his cheek are a sign for a saviour, a cry for a hero to come.

Who does not.

*

Hisagi Shuuhei grew up eating flowers. He ingested them into his wilted body until he grew tall and lean and fair. He was a white flower blooming in the benighted gloom of his _burakumin_ district, and Hisagi Shuuhei danced the Dance of Darkness.

He possessed within him an indestructible spirit that fed on his ever-increasing despair. The _butoh_ that he danced reeked of torment and assailed his audiences with the stink of a terrifyingly deformed pleasure. And like all _butoh_ dancers, Hisagi Shuuhei danced barefoot, but the difference was this, he danced barefoot to seek out the soil-he only performed in the open-to dig through what was underneath the soil that is black, soaked through with moisture.

In one performance Hisagi Shuuhei cut through the skin of his naked chest with a knife and wailed, "Ah, look at this, I'm black inside but my blood is still red."

Seated amongst the audience was his patron, who left the performance venue still trembling at the artist's declaration of the death instinct. Alone with him once, Hisagi Shuuhei had told him that he feared the methods he would have to use in order to tap on the dormant forces that lay hidden within him, "The darkness in _butoh_ is what is unknown to us." The patron had laughed then, not believing that the dancer was truly capable of putting himself through the pain and deprivation to dance the _butoh_ he wanted. But Hisagi Shuuhei apparently no longer feared the blade.

_What more can he suffer? How much more will he withstand?_

As the patron makes the turn at the crossroads to head towards Hisagi Shuuhei's living quarters to wait for him after the performance, he crushes the programme flyer in his hand. The name of the _butoh_ performance that night is: The earth, not wrinkled like the human heart.

- end -

Notes:  
+ The opening lines of the fic are from _Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence_ starring **Ryuichi Sakamoto** and **David Bowie**.  
+ "_Burakumin_ are Japan's little-known outcaste class who still suffer subtle and not-so-subtle acts of discrimination and abuse." (fr. Kenji Nakagami's _The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto_)  
+ _Butoh_ is "an avant garde performance art, that has its origins in Japan in the 1960s. After the second world war, Japan was a country in transition [...] During this time there was much student unrest and protest. Theatre groups were performing socially challenging pieces, and there were daily demonstrations in the streets. Butoh was born out of this chaos. Its founders were a young rebellious modern dancer named Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 -1986), and his partner Kazuo Ohno (b. 1906). Hijikata [...] wanted to find a form of expression that was purely Japanese, and one that allowed the body to "speak" for itself, thru unconscious improvised movement. His first experiments were called Ankoku Butoh, or the Dance of Darkness." (fr. Don McLeod's History of Butoh)


End file.
